Outsider: Retribution
by miikaawaadizi
Summary: Outsider Book II: Marisa returns to get her revenge for Cally's death, and in classic Marisa style decides to do it in her own way, complications or reporters be damned. Unfortunately, there's several very big complications. WIPCAD
1. Vincit qui patitur

**Vincit qui patitur**

Running is supposed to be good for you.

Running away is even better.

Running for your life, now there's a skill to develop, cultivate, cherish, embrace.

Not that it makes much difference.

Some thing can't be run away from.

Some lives cannot be saved.

No matter how fast your legs move you, there's always a pair of them out there that are longer, faster. Jogging? Bah! Great for cardio-vascular exercise, but that just means your blood pumps out stronger and further when ...

Flash of black, scream of sibilant joy, darkness.

"God-frigging-damnit!" A meaty fist thumped into the console as the monitor showed the dark shape tear its victim apart, chitinous banana shaped head buried deep within the ruined mass that was all that remained of the last of the latest batch.

The others in the room, faces almost as white as the lab coats they wore, shrank back, clipboards and PDAs clutched to their chests as if to ward off the fury of the speaker as he spun to face them. Rage contorted his reddening face as he leaned back against the console, resting his hands against the edge in a white knuckled death grip.

"I thought you said this time it would work?" he snarled, but he seemed resigned at the same time. They had replayed this many times now. On the screen behind him, unnoticed, the black shape could be seen tossing the remains aside, then its head swiveled upwards, tracking in an eerie way towards the camera.

"Sir, we thought we had it conditioned this time, it ..." He cut the lab coated man off with an abrupt cutting motion with his hand. "Yes, you _thought_ you had it, it's _obvious_ you _thought_ you had it, but you _didn't_. And now we've lost another group." The sneer in his voice was stark.

"You've had these things for 5 years now. 5 _years_!" The creature on the monitor swayed slightly, its head tracking from side to side as if it was sniffing the air, before it turned and scuttled off into the shadows of the maze it inhabited. "A lot of money has gone into this project, so would any of you like to tell me why there is as yet no return on it?"

One of the lab coated women spoke up, indignantly squaring off against the man, out of place in that clean laboratory room in his grey suit.

"No return? Sir, we have come up with silicate based medicines that have beggared belief, we're extended the lifespan of humans by a decade more and that's without even processing the ..." She tapered off into silence as he gazed at her, cold eyes promising untold misery. When he responded, his voice was equally cold, equally uncaring.

"I am aware of all the benefits that the creatures have produced. I am also aware, as you all seem to have forgotten, that none of them are the primary objective of this project. Need I remind any of you that without that objective being met, this project will be considered a failure?" His eyes roamed across the faces of the people in front of him, and none could maintain eye contact.

"So now I am the one has to return to the Company and report ..." He was cut off as a deep throated vibration rumbled through the room. He span to look at the monitor in time to see a cloud of green fluid spread out across one wall, flashes of silver sparking beyond as the gatling guns mounted high up in the test chamber fired through the pulped remains of the creature, aborting its climb towards an opening set high above the floor.

After a few seconds, the guns went quiet, traversing back to their standby positions as their sensors reported the creature's obliteration, and the man bowed his head.

"How long until we can hatch a replacement?" he asked, not looking up. The woman who had spoken out before cleared her throat.

"Once we have a new host, two days. But training a new one will take several months." The grey suited man nodded once, then turned to face her.

"I suggest that the next test be more successful. Or the host after that might be one of you." With that chilling edict, he strode out of the room, leaving the rest of them glancing nervously towards each other.

-

* * *

-

"Not yet"

She growled into her mask as she rolled over onto her stomach, then to her feet. Without pause she darted in again, bringing her arm around quicksilver fast but the twin mounted blades mounted to her forearm missed the armored form in front of her by millimeters. Waiting for her swing to take her off balance, it stepped forwards until it was beside her then elbowed her in the side.

She stepped back, wrenched over to one side as her hand rubbed against her ribs where she had been caught. The armored figure in front of her cocked its head to one side thoughtfully, then sank to one knee in genuflection. After a moment, she slowly followed suit.

"You still allow anger to guide you, not instincts." The words scrolled across the display at the bottom of her vision inside the mask, somehow projected inside the eyepieces using the alien technology that had become a part of her mission.

"That anger keeps me going. That anger gives me reason." she retorted hotly, knowing that the one she was talking to understood her language just fine, even if in return it could only speak in grunts, clicks, whistles (and more often simple roars) that needed the translation of her mask for her to make sense of.

The figure in front of her shook its head, braided dreadlocks swaying from side to side as it clucked irritably behind its own mask. "The Hunt is the reason, not revenge."

"Your reason. Not mine." Unspoken, they both knew she needed the anger to bury her loss, the sadness, that was her reason. "You agreed to train me, I don't need lectures."

It growled softly. "You refuse to understand. How you think is just as much part of the Hunt as how you fight. As long as you fight from anger, you will not be ready. You would fall to the least capable." The figure stood quickly, sheathing its own forearm mounted blades as Marisa stood in return.

"There is nothing more to be gained from training you this day. I may return another day, but I have Hunting to do."

"More humans to murder?" she bit out the words scornfully. Her opponent tensed and the strength of will in not attacking Marisa was almost palpable.

"Hunt, not murder. If you were further along in your training, I could show you the difference. But as long as you think the Hunt is all about fighting, you would be a liability." The tall gray armored figure paused, then: "You will never have the chance to face him until you think like him."

Marisa hung her head, not daring to reply as her opponent shimmered and vanished into thin air. She could have tracked its progress by switching the vision modes in her mask, but its parting words had stung her.

"I will never think like you, Yautja" she whispered to herself before she shook off her mood and let the rooftop they had been sparring on, heading home.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

My deepest apologies for the delays in Retribution and the finale of the trilogy, Redemption.

Those of you who have been here before may recall there were two chapters posted originally. Those have been removed, and I'm cleaning up the chapters of Retribution and posting them here as and when I find time. You'll understand as it goes along :)

Outsider: Redemption will follow shortly on the heels of Retribution, I hope you all enjoy both of them as much as you did Epiphany.

There are still remaining death scenes in Redemption, for any who know me and are interested in applying for them.

See if you recognize any of the characters in this second book :)

miika


	2. Ut incepit fidelis, sic permanet

**Ut incepit fidelis, sic permanet**

Five years. No time at all, and an eternity all rolled into one. As Marisa climbed up onto the balcony and into her apartment, she still felt the pang that drove her, consumed her. It was here in this place that she had admitted her love for her friend, here that she had nearly died, cut down by a cowardly hunter who thought she was Cally, and it was here she had discovered to her surprise that Cally had left to her in a will long forgotten.

It was somehow fitting then that it had been here that her desire to avenge her friend's death had taken shape, and Marisa began along the path her friend had followed to her death. So much of their history in the last few weeks before Cally's death was bound up here that the symbolism was overwhelming, and a focus to keep Marisa dedicated to the task she had set herself.

She was going to hunt Cally's killer, and kill him.

That was the plan, at least. She had discovered that putting it into practice was another matter entirely. As she went into the bedroom and began stripping the sparse pieces of armor she wore from her sweat-slick skin, her mind wandered back, as it always did, into her memories of the aftermath of Cally's death.

It had been hard at first for her to be motivated to do anything. Her mind kept returning to watching the alien return to his ship, the alien that had saved her life, and seeing him place his trophy on the wall. "Honored prey" they had considered her friend, but the honor seemed hollow to Marisa, considering the qualifications for the title seemed to be being hunted down and killed by some psychopathic alien race.

For someone like Marisa, who had led her entire life to that point with a carefree "live and let live" attitude, the shock to her psyche of her friend's death had almost driven her to insanity. For the first time in her life, she felt rage – not anger, but that all-consuming blood-red haze of pure rage and a desire to tear another living creature to pieces with her bare hands.

She had wanted to, then and there, but it had laughed at her. The double hammer blow of seeing that the creature did not think of her as even a remote threat had slammed her into despair, and she had run weeping from its ship, after telling it that she would kill it. Its mocking last words rang in her ears with every heavy footstep on her way home.

"Not yet."

The same words it had told Cally for over two decades. And when "Not yet" became "You're ready"? It had killed her.

Some honor.

Blindly in the night, she had stumbled back to Cally's apartment, though she could never recall why she had gone there. Her last tangible reminders of her friend and love were the apartment and the alien metal mask she had carried from the hunter's ship, the mask Cally had worn in battles, whose eyeshields she would have looked through and saw her death approaching. She had collapsed in the living room, sobs wracking her body for long hours before exhaustion finally overcame her and she slept.

It had taken her a week to collect her senses enough to do more than exist, numbly doing mundane things. She had scrubbed the bathroom, where she had almost died herself, until it was spotless. She couldn't bring herself to enter the bedroom though. The very idea of it would bring the wave of despair at her loss crashing down on her once more. In a real sense, for that week she was insane with grief, and it took the oddest thing to snap her out of the state she had reached.

The TV had been nothing more than background noise, hardly noticeable babble from talking heads inanely blathering on about nothing of importance. One night however, just as she was reaching to turn it off, a news report flashed up that brought her back to earth. She recognized the photograph on the screen without needing the caption below to tell her who it was. The face of the reporter that had hounded Cally stared out, and as Marisa had thumbed the volume of the remote control up, she found out the woman had been committed to a psych institution.

Marisa thought about the time she had met the reporter, the crazed venom in her voice as she had threatened to expose Cally, and could well believe she had cracked. The shock came with the mention of Cally as being a suspect in the mass murder of organized crime figures in the city, which had culminated in the "terrorist destruction" of the bunker the mob bosses had tried to use as a trap to catch Cally. The news item implied that the committal of the reporter and the destruction of the building were connected.

Marisa didn't know the details of that dark night, when predators and Cally had spread through the mob bunker wreaking mayhem and death, but she knew the connection was there. Seeing the reporter mentioned in the same article as Cally offended her sensibilities – Cally had tried to do good, to fight the scourge of the mob bosses, and the reporter was just a crazy looking for a scoop, regardless of who she hurt or destroyed in the process. Marisa knew there was no way she could set the record straight, and with her friend now dead there would be no way of clearing her name from the taint of suspicion.

To Marisa, Cally had died for nothing. And resolve was born. She remembered her promise to Cally's killer, and how Cally had become involved with the aliens to begin with. It took another day for the idea she formed that night, watching the news, to consolidate itself into an icy ball of purpose in Marisa's heart, and that night she began to put her idea into action.

Even so, it had taken another four months before the plan came to fruition. Piecing together what little she knew of the aliens, she had rigged a signal of sorts on the apartment balcony railings, heaters set to warn the railings imperceptibly in the shape of a stylized _-__TT__-_, the mark Cally's killer had given her. She knew that the aliens regularly came to earth to hunt humans, "_pyode amedha_" as the aliens called them – soft meat. She took a chance that they, attuned as they were to heat sensitivity, would see the mark, and curiosity get the better of them, that they come investigate.

Come they did.

-

* * *

-

The years had not been kind to Kylie McCullough either. Once a rising star in the news business, now she was ridiculed. She had been released from treatment after four years, but everyone "knew" she had gone off the deep end, talking about aliens and attacks and an interstellar drug war. Not even the police had taken her story seriously, although they were happy to pin the blame for the disaster at the bunker on the mysterious "bitch in black". They refused to acknowledge the scant evidence collected from the site of the pitched battle was more supportive of the reporter's version than not.

It hadn't been long after her release from the institution that she was contacted by someone who had taken her accounts of that night very seriously indeed though.

At first, she thought the mysterious stranger in the gray suit was a set-up, either an attempt by the shrinks to see if she was unstable and have an excuse to lock her up again, or by her ex-colleagues trying to humiliate her with some upcoming special - "When reporters go batshit" or something. That lasted all of five minutes during their first meeting, when he had pulled a small monitor out of his pocket and showed her tape that could only have come from inside the bunker during the night her world collapsed around her.

Once she had recovered from her shock, he patiently explained that he represented the company that had originally designed the data center the bunker had been intended to serve as, and that all the surveillance systems had been connected up to feed through to a main center. They had seen everything - digitally transmitted, recorded, archived, and now in safe hands. Theirs. She didn't think much of the claim about the hands being safe.

Even less when the man in gray had commented that the more compromising footage of Kylie's involvement in the whole affair might have to be turned over to the proper authorities. She had argued against it, but she knew that it was pointless. It wouldn't take much for the authorities to latch onto the proof the man in gray could provide them and use her as a convenient scapegoat, transferring the blame from the bitch in black to her.

When the man in gray had made his proposal though, all thoughts of not co-operating, or co-operating under the threat of the taps being released vanished from her mind. He had done his research well, the tapes were just to get her attention but he knew exactly how to get her to come on board the mysterious project he talked of – he offered her the bitch in black!

Even the news of how they planned to lure the human hunter into their traps couldn't shake Kylie's fevered lust for revenge. Over the course of four years locked away, her hatred for Cally had festered and grown, Kylie's precariously delusional state magnifying the hunter into being the cause of all her woes. So the news that the man in gray claimed to have an alien, like the black ones she had seen over those fateful days, as bait, the knowledge of how lethal the creature was, elicited no more response than a raised eyebrow.

Before he had finished outlining the plans for the project, she would have signed on for anything, agreed to anything, all for one chance at her revenge. She left the country in a private jet with him that very evening, and as they crossed the Pacific ocean she was staring through the window, already playing over and over in her mind just what she would do when she had the bitch in black in her clutches finally.

Kylie would make her pay dearly for all that had happened.

For the next year, Kylie was the ramrod behind the project. It was her experiences, albeit limited, that guided construction of the testing areas, the breeding chambers, and the defenses that were both to contain the black aliens within the project compound, and to take on the hunters if, no _when_, they came. She had seen the bunker, and how easily it had fallen, and meticulous debriefing of the events of that night, etched indelibly in her memory through trauma, gave the engineers assigned to the construction of the compound insights on ways to counter the hunter's techniques.

Kylie also chose the first host to birth the new generation of aliens for the project they had in mind for her, and in that choice lay the beginnings of her revenge. He had kicked and screamed as they had strapped him to a bench, begging she remember their relationship before, for his life. She had watched without emotion as the alien facehugger had emerged from its egg and sprung to clamp over the terrified bearded face of its victim, turning a deaf ear to his pleas just before he was silenced by the leathery tube snaking down his throat to spare him.

To her mind, he had been the first one to betray her, to testify against her in the committal proceedings the most damningly. He had been the first to recognize her madness, and he was its first victim. She had been there again, watching over monitors, as he had convulsed during the birth of his child, her child. A corner of her mind found it ironic that someone who had been a cameraman most of his adult life died on television, after a fashion.

Lost in the depths of insanity, trapped within her own mania and paranoia, she exulted at the thought her revenge was starting. The company the gray man represented treated her well, but she knew they saw her simply as a tool. She didn't care, because she had her own plans, and as far as she was concerned, they were, in return, a tool for her. The weapon she would use.

-

* * *

-

It came in the night, as it always did, relying on stealth and Marisa's exhausted sleep to avoid detection. It entered through the balcony doors, a low growl of amusement coming softly from within as it stepped over the telltale threads Marisa had placed across the doorway that would tell the human someone had been there when she woke. It looked briefly at the sleeping form, tossing fitfully in her sleep on the couch, and considered the words of the trainer it had overheard from its hiding place earlier.

After long minutes, it turned and left the way it had come, avoiding the telltales once more, before shimmering into the night air like a ghost, the only trace left behind the breathy voice of a female human, crackled with slight static.

"_Not yet_."


	3. Nec dextrorsum, nec sinistrorsum

**nec dextrorsum, nec sinistrorsum**

Daylight was being irresponsible and no respecter of late nights as usual, the late afternoon sun piercing through the balcony doors, diffused into a softer white by the curtains but no more desirable even so as its glow pressed insistently through her eyelids. A weary groan escaped her lips as she slowly levered herself upright, blinking blearily at her surroundings.

"Coffee!" she muttered to herself, then willed her body to respond to commands to go in search of the ambrosia, wincing as her bruises from the past few nights of training made themselves known to her conscious mind again. Reflexes honed to the task long before she had ever become aware of aliens, hunters, or much of anything else swiftly swung into action, robotic guidance of her movements making short work of the process until, finally, she had the goal in hand.

Marisa made her way back to the couch, stepping gingerly over the pile of hunter's armor lying where she had left it on her return the night before, before sitting gingerly on the edge of the cushions, cradling her mug in one hand while she flipped on the television using the remote lying on the floor beside her. She sat there for a few minutes, letting the television watch her as she slowly drank her coffee and tried to wake up, then shook her head.

"This is not getting anywhere." She rose and headed towards the bathroom, turning the volume up on the way and tossing the remote control back down on the couch. She was unaware of how closely her actions mirrored the routine her friend had once followed.

As the hot water splattered across her skin, she thought ahead to the night's training. She knew she only had a limited time with the alien that was training her, each time the ship came and more humans died, and wanted to make the most of it while she could. Unconsciously she rubbed the tips of her fingers over the jagged pale blotch-like scar in the middle of her chest, knowing that its cousin lay opposite it on her back – a reminder of the alien that had almost killed her in this room once.

She had accumulated more scars in the years since then, thanks to her trainer, but the mysterious blue liquid in the alien medical kit worked its magic each time. She winced at the sting as the water pressure rubbed against the scores in her arms that had been the result of last night's session, the pale blue lines of the remaining healing fluid standing out against her tanned skin, but as she toweled herself off she couldn't help agree that the fluid was doing its job.

As she stepped out of the bathroom, rubbing her tangled hair to dry it, she stopped short. She had a visitor.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you things to knock?" she snapped, making her way around the couch. The mottled alien figure gave no reply, its head cocked over in curiosity as it watched the images on the TV screen and she sighed before reaching down to the pile of armor and extracting the mark from the tangle of straps and hides it had casually been discarded with. Raising it to her face she pressed it against her skin, and was rewarded with the lenses of the eyeshields flashing into life.

"You're here early." Still no response. Her relationship with this strange alien hunter, this killer, was as strange as any she could find.

When the aliens had come in response to her signal, their first instinct had been to kill her. They had expected to find Cally here, and were angry that Marisa, a mere human, would 'summon' them. She had argued with them, told them she wanted to learn, to train, to hunt, to go after Cally's murderer, but they simply refused to understand.

To them, it was an honor, part of the whole screwed up culture. That Cally had fought beside them, hunted with them, earned their respect, meant nothing to them. She has even been blooded by them, marked as being worthy of a kinship of sorts with them, but the concept of avenging Cally's death was totally ... well, alien to them.

Marisa wasn't as ditzy as she liked the world to think, though. She had picked up enough clues about the strange culture of the aliens that she knew which buttons might work, and had pushed them without a shred of hesitation. She had reminded them that she was Cally's friend, she reminded them Cally had warned them not to hunt her. And she saved the best for last – one of their own had cowardly attacked her, a defenseless human, and almost killed her.

They owed her. She was here to collect.

Of all the things she could have argued, and did, the only one that made a difference to the hunters was this last. The bad blood, the alien's name for one who acted without honor, had deeply shamed them on a fundamental level, and their peculiar sense of honor was the only leverage she had that could have, and did, work.

How they chose to repay the debt of honor she had reminded them was, to her, an insult though. She had demanded training, to learn to hunt, equipment – the skills she would need to take on an alien Elder, one of the deadliest members of that lethal race. They granted her a trainer, a respected and experienced hunter, but to her it was an insult.

Her trainer, standing beside her now watching the television, was a female.

The differences were there, if you knew the males reasonably well – thinner, with longer braided hair (or whatever that stuff on their heads was), but more fluid and sinuous, sensual in movement. The alien males exuded graceful power and economy of movement, but the female that had become Marisa's trainer for the past five years was elegance in motion. Marisa had objected to being trained by a female, that first night, but learned quickly that the female of the species was just as deadly as the males, as she was tossed around the ship's practice arena effortlessly.

Despite the technology of the translator built into Cally's old mask, Marisa's one now, the names still didn't translate. Following Cally's practice, Marisa had nicknames for the aliens, the Elder was just "The Elder", and her trainer ... Marisa had seen the way the males watched the female hunter, and dubbed her "Foxy Lady". Marisa was still Marisa, in some ways.

Marisa looked across at the television and saw it was a news item about some war in the middle of nowhere, just another tale of conflict in a world of conflict. Idly she wondered how the aliens would enjoy having so many people with guns to go after, then mentally kicked herself. They were still humans, and that counted for more, even if they were busy raping and committing acts of genocide, when measured up against some alien, right?

As if reading Marisa's mind, the alien turned towards her, reaching clawed hands up either side of her mask to release the connectors between it and her armor in a hiss of escaping gases. As the alien pulled the mask free from its face, Marisa's eyes were drawn as always past the deep set dark eyes to the jagged acid-etched scar on its forehead, its blood mark. Shaped like a ç, it marked this female as being a capable hunter.

"Do you ask lions if you can come onto the plains to hunt them?" it took Marisa a moment to understand the question as it scrolled across the display in front of her eyes in the mask. She straightened up in irritation.

"I thought I was your student, not prey?" The alien chirped a laugh, the wide spaced mandibles framing her mouth spreading wide and shaking in mirth.

"You are learning to hunt, there is a fine line between predator and prey at any time. All too often the one can become the other. A wise hunter keeps this in mind." Ahh, another lecture. Great. Marisa shifted her focus as the alien pointed to the television screen and cocked her head in query.

"Those _pyode amedha_ hunt other _pyode amedha_, they think themselves the predators. Were _Yautja_ there, we would be the predators, and they the prey." Marisa bit back the smart ass remark that had been on the brink of escaping. She could see the logic, and inclined her head to show that, but the question still lingered in the air between them. The alien shook her head a fraction.

"Until you are ready to hunt, you are no challenge, and unlikely to be hunted. Consider yourself ... future prey" The alien let out a loud laugh at its own joke, as Marisa rolled her eyes behind the mask. They had one of the strangest senses of humor.

"So what's the plan tonight? You going to throw me around the roofs some more?" she asked sarcastically. She was taken aback by the alien's negative shake of the head, and gasped at the response.

"Tonight, you come hunting."

"The hell I will! I told you, I'm not interested in killing humans, the only thing I want to kill is the thing that killed my friend!" She stood her ground, head high as the alien took two steps closer and reached for her throat. The claws rested lightly on either side of her neck and she could feel her blood pulsing through her arteries there, gently throbbing against the warm alien flesh.

"You wish for me to stop training you?" Marisa's heart jumped up into her throat ... Stop training her? That would mean she couldn't go after the murderer!

"You can't, you're honor bound to train me." she got out past suddenly dry lips. The alien looked at her, unreadable emotions behind her eyes.

"I have trained you as much as you can be trained with simple practice. I have taught you how to fight, but you must also learn how to hunt. Do you think the Elder you seek will simply stand on a rooftop and wait for you?" Marisa shook her head as much as she dared with the claws around her neck. The alien seemed satisfied with this and removed her claws slowly, then motioned to the pile of armor Marisa had left on the floor.

"Equip yourself. Tonight we see if you have hope."

-

* * *

-

"How many did we lose this time?" The voice was soft spoken, almost resigned, but neither Kylie nor the man in gray made the mistake of thinking it showed any vulnerability in the speaker.

"Four, sir, and ..." Kylie interrupted him harshly.

"The numbers don't matter, why was the alien killed?" The man in gray sighed.

"It was trying to escape. It was almost to the climate control vents when the automatic guns took it down, as they were designed to do." Kylie snorted.

"If those egg heads of yours had done their job conditioning the damned thing properly to begin with, it wouldn't have tried to escape!"

The three were in an office suit high above the city, Kylie and the man in gray on one side of the large desk that dominated one end of the office, the third one present seated on the other side, their high backed chair swiveled to face outside. The chair swung gently from side to side as the occupant allowed the two of them to bicker, as they always did.

"I seem to recall you once said that it was impossible to train the creatures, Ms McCullough. As the one with the most _experience_ with them, I am sure you recognize the difficulties of the research team." The condescension he put into the word '_experience_' set Kylie's teeth on edge.

"They're supposed to be the professionals, they said they can do it. I've yet to see results. I don't care how many test subjects we lose, I do care how many aliens we ..." She broke off as the seated figure raised their hand, then swiveled the chair around to face them.

"_I_ care, Ms McCullough," he said, still using that soft voice. "I care a great deal, because each one of them has a considerable amount of time and effort, not to mention money, that has been spent training _them_ to the peak of their abilities as well. None of them is expendable." Kylie looked at the top of the desk, trying to hold back her opinions.

"Sir, I understand that, but the project is more important than any one soldier, trained or not. My area is the creatures, not the soldiers." she noted, quietly. The man steepled his fingertips together and looked at Kylie, deep in thought for a few minutes.

"You are right, Ms McCullough, but at the moment, your area is not attainable until the basic conditioning can be accomplished." He turned back to the man in gray.

"Do the scientists have any thoughts as to why they failed once more?"

"The creatures seemed to be conditioned. The threat to the queen's eggs every time one of the creatures made an aggressive move towards the lab staff seemed to have had an effect. We're not sure what changed their caution."

The man behind the desk nodded his head as he digested the information.

"Very well. Return to the complex and continue with the experiments. I suggest finding more persuasive deterrents for our pets." With that decree, he swiveled his chair to look out the window once more, an obvious gesture of dismissal to both his visitors, who swiftly left the office. The man continued to look through the window for a few minutes until he became aware of the presence of someone else behind him. He spoke without turning.

"You have news?"

"We have been unable to isolate the cause of the disturbances in the ionosphere, sir. They do appear to be the same type as have been detected on a regular basis, and could be another visit by the aliens." The new arrival spoke confidently, with deference and quiet assurance.

"Very well. Continue to monitor. It is not yet time for us to extend our invitation."

-

* * *

-

They had been moving for an hour now, alternating between walking fast and jogging, resulting in a surprisingly ground-eating pace. Marisa was breathing steadily, if slightly hard, by the time her trainer raised her hand and went into a crouch by the side of a deserted and abandoned warehouse. Marisa closed the gap and crouched down beside the alien, shifting a little to make the mesh undergarment she wore a little more comfortable. Even with the mask sensors, she had to strain to hear the warning hiss from the alien.

"Your friend hunted _pyode amedha_ bad bloods, and you supported her in that hunting." A statement, not a question.

"Yes, but that's not the same as doing it myself." Her soft reply betrayed her nervousness, and was shrugged off by the alien hunter.

"You see no problem with hunting a _Yautja_ for killing your friend, but refuse to hunt your own kind who kill far more _pyode amedha_ than we do." Marisa tried to find an answer but came up short.

The entire journey from the apartment had been peppered with such discussions and points, at first Marisa thought the alien was baiting her but gradually realization dawned on her that her trainer was genuinely confused by Marisa's position and attitude. The bigger shock came with the understanding in her that the alien seemed genuinely to be trying to understand Marisa's position.

"Would you kill a _Yautja _without hesitation?" Marisa asked, trying to find a moral comparison to use. She was unsurprised at the answer.

"If they were bad bloods, without honor, yes. They dishonor us all and deserve no more."

"Well that shoots down that argument I guess." she muttered to herself, and was startled by the low trilling laugh that came from the alien beside her. "What?" she asked in exasperation.

"You are interesting." Huh? "You are not a hunter, everything you wish to do goes against your nature. But you insist on the attempt regardless."

"She was my friend." Marisa replied softly, then flinched as the alien put one clawed hand on her shoulder.

"You show honor in your devotion to her." Marisa looked over, the surprise she felt must have been evident in her body language. "I do not understand why you cannot see how much your friend was honored, to be trained by Elders, to be honored prey, to be given the chance to hunt with Yautja. But I believe you are trying to honor her." The alien removed her claw then gestured with her head towards the warehouse.

"In this place are _pyode amedha_ bad bloods." Marisa shook her head mutely, but the alien continued. "You will observe my hunting here. I lose too much time from hunting while I train with you, it is time that I did both things together."

"I will not kill humans."

"Then _pyode amedha_ will kill you, long before _Yautja_." Marisa shook her head, but her mind kept flashing back to the images on the television news that had caught the alien's attention. She might not hunt humans, but as long as humans hunted humans, there would always be the risk. Memories sprang unbidden to her mind of her reassurances to her friend, an eternity ago, about losing humanity, before she was jolted back to the present by a sharp poke from her trainer.

"Focus. Lose your concentration, lose your life." came the sharp rebuke, a throaty growl sounding low in the night air to emphasize the translated words in Marisa's mask. Without anything more being said, the trainer activated her cloak, fading into the night and Marisa had to switch the vision modes in her mask to see the alien's form darting around the corner as she activated her own. Quickly she moved, rounding the same corner then stopped dead, the alien nowhere in sight.

Instinctively she dropped into a crouch and started scanning in various vision modes, blinking and squinting her eyes so the sensors in the mask would change, but was interrupted by the clicking laugh of the trainer from above. Looking up, she saw the alien hanging by one arm from a downspout on the side of the warehouse, her other arm draped down within reach of Marisa in open invitation to grab.

The strength of the alien hunter was readily apparent as Marisa was lifted with ease until she could grab the downspout, bracing her feet on either side of it as she had been taught during prior sessions to hold herself in place.

"_Pyode amedha_ tend not to look up." There was no way Marisa could dispute that, having just proven it her own self, and she sighed inwardly. The alien looked at her and sensed the lesson was not lost, before wordlessly scrambling up the downspout to the roof of the warehouse, Marisa following suit although slower.

"Always learn to check up and down when you hunt _kainde amedha_, they understand very well how to hide in places their prey does not normally look." Marisa shivered at the idea. She had still yet to see one of the candy things, her only experience with anything to do with them being the tail of one that had been used as a spear and driven through her chest and nearly killed her. She looked around the rooftop they were on, changing vision modes unconsciously as she made sure there was no-one nearby.

Her trainer watched her closely, clucking softly to herself at each sign of nervousness, each sign of fear. She had discovered early on that the usual methods for training young _Yautja_ would have no effect on this _pyode amedha_, and had argued with the Elder several times as they made their regular visits to this world about the point of continuing. But as time grew, and the _pyode amedha_ kept coming back for more despite her obvious dislike of the whole thing, the alien warrior had developed a grudging respect for the _pyode amedha_'s perseverance.

Tonight would be a test of how far this soft-meat student was willing to go. Practice was over, it was time to see if the _pyode amedha_ could adapt and do what was necessary.

Silently padding across the gravel lined rooftop, despite her size, the alien crouched down close to a skylight and smoothly lifted the heavy metal cover away, Marisa coming close as they both looked down the shaft. It curved away to one side further down, but they both could hear the low noise of voices from inside the warehouse. Without a word, the alien climbed into the shaft and descended, letting the friction of her knees and elbows control her speed, Marisa following once the alien was out of sight at the bottom.

Marisa was having trouble with her armor in the shaft. The bigger, bulkier alien moved effortlessly, soundlessly through the thin-metal-sheathed tunnel, but nearly any time Marisa moved part of her armor would touch the walls, a low toned thud barely audible to any but deafening in her ears. Her face burned with embarrassment at what her trainer must be thinking of her, and through force of will tried to smooth her movements out.

If the alien had any opinions, she kept them to herself as Marisa joined her at a grille set in the end of the vent shaft, some twenty feet from the floor of the warehouse below. Marisa peered around her trainer into the warehouse, magnifying the view in the lenses of her mask until she caught sight of three, no four humans near the door. The magnified view showed the automatic weapons the humans held casually in their hands and her breath caught in her throat.

Not realizing it, her hands moved briefly over her weapons, limited though they were yet, The spear strapped to her thigh that would telescope out to a frightening length in the blink of an eye, the bat-wing shaped frisbee that could cut through steel without effort strapped to the other. The throwing stars mounted to the animal hide belt around her waist, before finally running the palms of her hands over the vambraces on either forearm that held the signature jagged blades of a _Yautja_.

Her trainer, in trying to find a common ground with this _pyode amedha_ she had been handed to train, had crafted the weapons and armor to give to Marisa as each piece was earned by herself. It was both practical, in making sure it would fit, as well as the alien's way of trying to engage Marisa to trust her more, but it seemed to be a doomed attempt. When she saw Marisa check her equipment without realizing it, the alien noted it approvingly.

Just as she placed one claw against the mesh closing off the end of the vent shaft, Marisa raised a hand and placed it against the alien's shoulder for a moment. The hunter cocked her head to Marisa curiously to hear the whispered words.

"Be careful, Foxy." Marisa withdrew her hand, embarassed and confused. This alien was just about to go murder four human beings, and she had just told it to be careful? She didn't have time to examine her actions any further as the alien pressed hard against the mesh and dropped through the opening, still cloaked.

As the trainer dropped, she brought one of her arms to bear on the furthest target, triggering the weapon slung underneath to launch a wire net that swiftly traveled the width of the warehouse and wrapped around its victim. As the strands of the net began to retract in on themselves, he tried to push the net away, and was rewarded with the razor-fine wire slicing into his hands down to the wrists.

Before her first victim could draw breath to scream, the alien was airborne once more, leaping across the warehouse floor and extending her spear. The other three humans were fast, spinning to try to locate the threat, and one of them spotted the telltale shimmer of air that marked the hunter's cloaked location. He brought the weapon in his arms up to bear just as the hunter launched her spear towards him, the shaft flying true, down the barrel of the gun, through the chambered round with an explosive cough, out the back and into the man's stomach.

The remaining two men started firing, blindly, and Marisa watched in stunned amazement as the red-hot streams of metal fanned out, she had dropped her mask into heat-sensitive mode reflexively. One of the lines of fire started swinging towards the mouth of the vent shaft and with a yelp she dropped through the gap towards the floor, brought to a halt just before it by the thread of mono-filament that trailed from a compartment inside her armor. She slapped at the side of her armor to cut the wire loose and scrambled to one side, hoping her cloak would help, but by the time she looked to see what threats were remaining, only one gin was firing.

The third victim of the alien was dangling a foot from the floor, legs kicking vainly as his hands reached around the invisible arm that had him by the throat. The first one to fall started screaming, a high pitched squeal of agony as the net constricted further, cutting into his flesh. The remaining gunman swung his weapon around and let fly with the last ammunition he had, not caring that he pounded bullets into his erstwile comrade in the hopes of hitting what couldn't be seen.

Marisa caught her breath, sure the alien would be hit, but before she could react the hunter threw the bullet-riddled body of the one she had been holding towards the last man, who went down in a crumpled pile, Uncloaking, the alien strode towards the last survivor, trying to reload as she flexed her wrist and the twin bladed death mounted to her forearm shot forwards. Without fanfare, the trainer swing the arm around in a short arc, and the last man's head flew from his body, trailing twin pillars of crimson blood that slowed quickly before stopping.

The first one to fall became the last one to die, his screams tapering off into a bubbling wheeze as the net shredded him.

Marisa tried to control the trembling. It was over so fast. Four lives, snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Four armed people dead, before they really knew what hit them.

She was still crouching there on the floor as the hunter picked up the head of the one that had come closest to shooting her, and strode back towards Marisa casually holding it by the hair. Marisa could only look on in horror at the wide open eyes, until a moment ago alive, but now destined to be nothing more than a trophy.

"Welcome to the hunt."


	4. Veni, Vidi, Velcro

**Veni, Vidi, Velcro**

"If you cannot deal with this, you will never be able to hunt the Elder."

Marisa remained silent, trying to drag herself from watching the hunter cleaning her latest trophy but fascinated at the morbid process despite herself.

They had left the warehouse, and the grisly remains of the hunt, to move to a rooftop elsewhere before the alien had called a halt and began to nonchalantly strip the flesh from the skull.

"Did your friend take trophies?" The question came out of the blue, forcing Marisa's mind back to the drawer in Cally's closet that had held the teeth she had taken from her victims, and later the human skulls Marisa had seen dangling from her friend's belt. Slowly she nodded, unwilling to trust herself to speak. The alien growled then asked.

"Why?" Marisa blinked behind her mask.

"I don't know. I guess it's because she was learning to hunt, and she was taught that's what she was supposed to do."

It was the hunter's turn to be quiet in thought, as her hands sprayed the flesh-eating enzyme over the skull to clean it of remaining tissue. As the liquid jellied remains of flesh and remaining brain matter sloughed away to puddle on the tar paper roof, she spoke again, so softly that Marisa automatically turned up the reception on her mask's sensors to hear better even though the translator didn't seem to care about volume.

"They remind us of the hunt they were gained in. It is our way of honoring our prey, that they were challenge enough to be worth remembering, that taking them was a sign of our skill."

"So why just that skull and not the others?" The image of the bloodied remains of the four corpses being hoisted off the ground by their ankles to hang from the warehouse ceiling, using the same type of cord that had broken Marisa's fall from the vent shaft, came unbidden to Marisa's mind, but she shook the image off.

The alien hunter lifted the skull, gleaming pale yellow/white in the spill of streetlamps in the palm of her hand, facing towards Marisa. As she spoke, she ran one claw gently across the suture scars in the bone.

"This was the only trophy I took for the simple reason this _pyode amedha_ was the only one who came close to being a threat. When I look at his skull in the future, I will remember him." Both figures froze for a moment as voices wafted up from the street below, but while Marisa tensed with concern the alien remained loose, confident. Marisa waited until the voices faded with distance once more, trying not to think of what the alien might do if they were heard on the roof and someone came to investigate.

The incongruity of her situation didn't escape her. She was crouching on top of a roof, wearing alien armor and weaponry, facing an alien in similar armor who was calmly discussing body parts taken from humans she'd just killed as if they were trinkets. After she was sure there was no-one near, Marisa spoke up once more.

"Most people honor others by giving them a medal, or a watch, or a pink slip." Marisa tried to bring back some of her usual happy-go-lucky self with a weak smile, but she could see the references were lost on the alien.

"How can the ones given those 'honors' be sure the honor is genuine? They are passing moments, the gift is given and then is forgotten. This is eternal honor." Marisa snorted and the alien cocked her head to one side in curiosity.

"There's one problem – you're too dead to enjoy the honor." The alien barked a harsh laugh, standing and hooking the skull to her belt. She looked at Marisa for a long moment thoughtfully, then reached behind to unhook something from her armor. The alien went back into a crouch and held the metallic gray artifact out towards Marisa, who rose and moved closer before hunkering down again.

"The Elder you seek sent this to be given to you when you earned it." Marisa's eyes widened in shock.

"_He_ sent it?"

"Of course." Marisa numbly took the box from her trainer and turned it over in her hands, recognizing it as one of the alien medical kits.

"I already have one of these" She pointed out, cocking her head to one side not realizing she was displaying the _Yautja_ body language of curiosity.

"This is similar to the one your friend earned, the components are custom made for _pyode amedha_ physiology." Marisa laughed wryly.

"Does it include painkillers?" Her laugh was matched by the alien's.

"Medical supplies are supposed to hurt. It encourages you to avoid being in any condition to need to use them." Marisa couldn't tell if the alien was joking or not. A sudden thought came to her.

"How did I earn it? Watching you 'hunt' those four back there?" The alien's clawed hand dropped to stroke the skull it had just added to its belt lightly.

"In part. But also because you did not vomit as I cleaned my trophy." Marisa nodded slowly, recalling Cally once said that she had been given her mask the first time she had watched the process without throwing up. Wordlessly, she reached behind herself and unclipped the standard _Yautja_ medical kit strapped there, replacing it with the new one as she handed the old one over to the alien.

"Are you ready to hunt again?" _Again??_

-

* * *

-

They brought the new host in, doped and unconscious. The retrieval team had found a spitting tiger in the short blond woman, and the team leader was going to need stitches for the long gash that would have cut him worse if not for the body armor he had been wearing.

It was hard to keep the host retrieval low-key. This project was only one part of the entire goal, and the need for new hosts as experiments whittled down the number of drones already born and grown. At one stage itinerants, down and outs and the homeless had been used as the least likely to be missed, but the quality of drones that ripped their way screeching from the chests of those hapless souls seemed to be lower than those from healthy humans.

This one seemed clean and healthy enough, the loose dress and hair clearly identified her as part of the Romany community, the gypsies who wanted little dealings with authorities. She would likely not be missed by anyone of consequence.

The team none too gently threw the unconscious woman into the specially coated perspex box at one end of the monitoring room, and the lab coated scientists clustered around their machines, quietly clucking over the readouts as they waited for the next step to be completed.

Completely automated, waldos lifted a leathery egg from the other side of the complex, clamps closing over the petals on top to ensure it remained sealed as they smoothly traversed the special conduits that led between the areas, before depositing their cargo inside the box next to the woman. The scientists, engrossed in their displays, didn't notice the woman's eyes open to slits, examining her surroundings.

The petals of the egg splayed outwards with a sucking sound, allowing the spindly legs of the creature within to poke through its protective membrane before it levered itself out of its home. Tentatively, the legs touched the air, as if tasting it to find the woman, before in a blur it leaped out of the egg towards its victim.

Just a little slower, the woman rolled, and the disturbingly spider-like alien landed on the ground where her head had been a moment before. It didn't have a chance to try to jump again, as the woman's hand came from under her skirt, a small blade daggering downwards to pierce the ridged spine of the alien, through and into the ground.

It took the scientists a moment to register the movement – they had seen this part of the process many times before, and had no interest in it. The first they knew something was amiss was when the woman let out a screech as a spurt of acidic ichor from the scrabbling alien creature's wound splashed over her hand and forearm.

Quickly, the noise of the scientists calling out to each other in confusion reached the same volume as the woman's cries, staring in horror at the fast-dissolving ruin of her limb. In a panic, she kicked at the sides of the box, but there were only two openings, both sealed shut – one into the monitoring room, the other out into the arena-like enclosure where the last experiment had ended in spectacular failure.

With nowhere to run, and shock numbing the agony of her ruined arm, she stood there breathing heavily, staring in rage out at the assembled scientists. Before any of them could think of something to do, the retrieval team leader strode to a control console on the wall and flipped a lever, opening the door behind the woman that led out into the enclosure. Seeing the opening, she darted through and out into the vaulted area beyond.

"What the hell did you do that for?" one of the scientists yelled, but his voice tailed off at the icy glare he received.

"Bitch wants to play, she can go play with the bugs." he said, his voice cold and vindictive. The scientist that had challenged his actions quailed at the suppressed danger he heard in the man, as the other scientists rushed to the monitors displaying the view from cameras inside the enclosure. Collectively, they barely dared to breathe as they watched the gypsy woman stumble along the same path that only days ago had been the focus of attention, but then were astonished when the woman vanished. Frantically, one of them began manipulating the camera controls, panning and zooming around but unable to spot her.

"Where the fuck did she go?" snapped the team leader, but the only answer the scientists could give him was their blank stares and silence.

Inside the arena, the woman had bolted to stand along one wall, right below a camera. Her eyes, glazed in pain from the destruction of her hand and arm, darted nervously along the rest of the space, finding the cameras and gaging their fields of vision. She watched intently as they moved, searching for her without any pattern of organization, and she was able to sidle along the wall staying out of the view of them all as they tracked the wrong places.

She came to a low opening in the wall, a hot moist wave of air coming from deep within the darkness, and she ducked inside to avoid the return sweep of one of the cameras. Losing her footing, she reached out with her remaining good hand but missed the edge and fell onto her backside before sliding down the inclined corridor, rubbing skin raw against the surface as it got rougher the deeper she went.

She came to an abrupt halt when she hit a low solid resinous wall, and as she shakily tried to regain her feet she peered around in the near total darkness around her. Her ears were filled with a low pulsing hiss, and she turned her head back and forth trying to locate its source, but it seemed to surround her. Moving blindly, her hand in front of her she moved back towards the corridor up, then felt searing pain for a frantic moment before her entire body went numb. She died not knowing how, or how much cleaner a death it was than the one that had been planned for her.

-

* * *

-

The alien had run Marisa ragged getting to the new target area. Several times she had asked herself in her mind why she was still following the alien, she knew what was going to happen when they reached their destination. Was getting revenge for Cally's death so important she would willingly sit back and let the hunter kill more humans?.

Each time she asked the question, she couldn't come up with an answer. She concentrated on trying to keep up with the alien female, her feet automatically responding with instincts trained into her by the same alien to the ground (and roofs) they passed across in a peculiar gait that combined speed with stealth. Compared to the alien's tread, Marisa was still a baby elephant lumbering through the area, but anyone nearby would have been hard pressed to hear anything more than a whisper of displaced air.

By the time they reached their destination, Marisa was beginning to feel the burn in her legs. Despite spending the previous five years training and conditioning herself towards her ultimate goal, she was still making up for the far greater number of years spent being a professional laze. She looked at the building ahead of them with curiosity as they both sank to low crouches.

"This place is a greater challenge than the last." Marisa switched vision modes as the hunter spoke, trying to see what made it a challenge. She was shocked when the sensors started showing her the silhouettes of multiple humans inside.

"You're going to kill all of them?" she stuttered, then let her breath out in relief when the alien beside her growled a soft negative.

"Only a few in this place have weapons. The majority are _pyode amedha_ females, captives. There is no honor in hunting them." came the quiet explanation. "Little honor in those that hunted them either." Marisa took a moment to digest this surprising judgment from the alien. She turned her attention back to the innards of the building as it appeared inside her mask, and made some shrewd guesses.

"It's a whore house – a place where women are forced to perform sex acts for money." She could _feel_ the anger start to rise from her companion, and in a moment's impishness finished with "Calm yourself, don't hunt in anger, remember?" The alien's head swung around sharply but then Marisa could sense Foxy's muscles loosen, a soft snort her only audible response.

"Do you really believe bad bloods such as they deserve to live?"

"Girl, at this point I don't honestly know any more. What they do pisses me off just as much as it obviously does you, but does that justify killing them? Does killing them make me better than them?"

"Does letting them continue to prey on your kind?" Marisa could only shrug helplessly at the question, nervously fingering the spear strapped to her thigh. She looked over at the hunter as the latter pressed a catch on her forearm vambrace, and as the cover to the computer built into it sprung open a faint blue holographic image appeared, hovering in space just above. The hunter pointed a claw into the display, stabbing at a phantasmal spot in the schematic of the building itself.

"Go here and watch. To hunt here requires greater skill, because the _pyode amedha_ captives must not see what passed them by. The last hunt was brute force. This hunt requires more elegance." Marisa nodded, wincing at the thought of one of the hookers seeing the alien beast on a killing rampage.

Satisfied Marisa had the plan, the hunter closed the cover to her computer and stood, quickly moving off towards one end of the building. Marisa stared at the alien's retreating form for a minute before realizing she was meant to find her way to the vantage spot the alien had given her on her own. As she stood and headed towards the other end of the building, she absently checked her weapons were in position and secured, the planning part of her mind that had once been more adept at putting together events now bent to the task of finding a way inside without her being seen.

Before she could reach the back of the building, she heard a muffled whoosh, and knew instantly something had gone wrong – the sound of the alien's plasma weapon, mounted to the shoulder of her armor, was unmistakable, and was closely followed by a second, then a third shot. Torn by indecision, Marisa reached the door and was debating what to do next when it slammed open, and a man fell through, his pants around his ankles and gibbering in terror.

She quickly satisfied herself that her cloak was still operational, and stayed to one side as the man dashed away, before carefully looking around the corner of the door frame into the building. The sounds of screams were getting louder, panic stricken cries ringing in her ears, but the sound of the alien's weapons discharges had stopped. A choking gurgle from further down the hallway beyond the door told her the reason. After a moment, all she could hear were the screams of the women, and even those started dying down as the prostitutes caught their breath, heard no fighting, and a nervous calm began to intrude on their fears.

Marisa didn't know what to do. It was obvious that going to the place the alien had told her to was pointless, there didn't seem to be anything to observe any more. Standing in the doorway though, she felt exposed and naked, as she imagined the hookers did, and so she stepped inside the doorway then to one side, dropping into a crouch. Without thinking, she unclipped the spear from her thigh and squeezed the handle, letting the shaft telescope to its full length, and then she held motionless, senses straining to detect any life nearby.

In the eerie silence that was beginning to fall on the building, she thought she could detect a rapid, faint thumping, and as she amplified the mask sensors she recognized it as a heartbeat. From the speed and irregularity, it was someone in terror, or wounded, and she turned to localize the source. Changing to her mask's heat sensitive mode, she could see the red-shaded form of a human crawling along the floor towards the doorway she was behind, but the shape seemed wrong.

She realized that whoever it was only had one arm, the other was nowhere to be seen. A helpless victim caught in the wash of the hellish energies the alien hunter wore so casually strapped to her armor, or one of the enforcers who guarded the brothel, Marisa couldn't tell, but they were getting closer. She could hear their labored breathing now, and tentatively identified the shape as a male – customer or bad guy?

She stared at the slowly moving human's heat signature for long moments before she remembered, she could check for weapons, and a quick blink, a shift of her mask's vision, and there one was, silvered glow against the monochromatic bearer. A motion in the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she glanced over to see the glowing outline of alien weapons – the hunter was there.

The man was getting closer to Marisa's location, closer to the door, but the alien stood impassively. Marisa's eyes shifted from alien to human, back again, wondering what the hell was going on. Foxy was ...

Standing still.

Watching.

Waiting.


	5. Ut desint vires

**Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas**

"Now wait one damned minute here" The man crawling along the floor towards the door stopped and looked around frantically trying to locate the source of her voice. She kept glancing from him to the alien towering beside her and back again, trying to quell the panic rising in her gut, her cloak holding firm in the darkness and in his emotional and physical state, the man stood little chance of seeing the telltale distortion around her.. The soft clicks and growls translated quickly into stark reality insider her mask.

"It is _pyode amedha_, a bad blood. Prey. Take it." She shook her head, hands gripping the shaft of her spear tightly. A part of her mind blinked as she realized the spear was extended, and she wondered when she'd done that.

"I am not a murderer." The man's eyes widened, and he tried to roll over onto his back as he heard the phantom voice from nowhere, knowing it was speaking about him.

"It has a weapon. It is prey." She had spent enough time around her trainer to recognize the tone of her 'voice', and the alien's words came out flat, matter of fact. She shifted her position and visibly tried to relax the death grip she had on her spear.

"If you do not kill it, it will kill you." Emphasizing the threat he posed, the man succeeded in shifting until he could reach the gun in his waistband, and he pulled it out before waving it around wildly, unable to spot his tormentors.

"I will not stop it killing you. If you disgrace my training, you do not deserve to live." She stared in horror at the alien, trying to make sense of the situation, trying to decide. She'd let the guy shoot her just because she refused to kill him? She remembered the first time she had met one of the hunters, how close she had come to dying that day, and how only Cally's intervention had stopped it.

But Cally wasn't here now.

The alien meant it.

The man had backed up against one of the walls, his eyes frantically searching in the gloom. Something caught his eye and he raised the pistol, finger jerking reflexively on the trigger time and again as he pumped bullets towards the danger.

Marisa was already in motion before the first gunshot registered on her consciousness, diving into a roll towards the man. When she straightened up, she was cloaked eyeshields to eye with his wide eyes. She tried to pull back but she was caught. Looking down she let out a cry as she saw the blades on one of her forearms were extended, and had pierced the man's chest. Frantically she tried to pull away, eventually to be rewarded with a jerk as the serrated teeth on the back of the blades dislodged from where they had caught between the man's ribs.

Scrambling backwards, a spray of blood spattering over her, she backed up to the opposite wall, the hand she had plunged towards the man waving in front of her as if in mute warding of the reality of what had just happened. The wetness of the blood arced and shorted her cloak, bringing her into visibility, but he was no longer in any condition to take advantage of it. She stared helplessly for long moments before she heard the last sigh of breath escape the man's lips before his head slumped forwards, the gun in his hand thumping to the floor with a metallic clatter.

She heard a pained rattle, but it took her a minute before she could tear her eyes away from the man she had just killed lying in front of her. When she looked over, she could see the alien had turned off her own cloak, and was poking one claw at a bullet wound, the neon green blood seeping out high on her arm.

Blood pounding in her ears, Marisa lunged towards her trainer with a scream of betrayal, the blades still extended on one of her forearms and the spear held in her other hand. The alien looked up as Marisa closed and extended her own wrist blades, barely parrying Marisa's wild swing that would have cut into the alien's arm in time. Instantly defensive and off balance, the hunter backed up, knocking aside each further strike Marisa made.

She felt a cold rush of rage inside her, the icy ball of her emotions crystallizing in her stomach, burning its way into her thoughts. She let the power of her anger wash loose over her, every fiber of her being devoted to destroying the alien in front of her. She growled out loud in frustration, rising in volume until it became a roar punctuating every failed attack, as the alien backed through the doorway and out onto the sidewalk beyond.

Rational thought had left her. When the Elder had returned to his ship with his trophy, she had felt rage then, and again every time she thought of that night since, but that was different, a cold rational conscious anger. This was sheer animal primal fury that she unleashed, a fury she did not know lay inside her. Part of her mind tried to retake control, to slow her down, but she brushed it aside and continued her swings.

Once they were clear of the close confines of the building, the hunter stopped backing up, and her movements became more fluid, the parries and blocks stronger. After a few more swings by Marisa, the alien started letting lose attacks of her own, wrist blades slicing through the air beside Marisa's head barely deflected by the spear the human carried. The alien kicked out, her foot catching Marisa's hip a glancing blow and the woman fell, but as the alien moved in to take advantage of it, Marisa flipped the spear towards her, forcing her to sidestep to avoid being impaled.

Marisa rolled back to her feet, limping slightly, and screamed her defiance into the night air as she extended the blades mounted on her other forearm, their reach freed now with the loss of her spear. The force of the scream rocked the alien back for a moment, and before she could recover Marisa was in close once more, punching and scything trying to land solid hits.

The two of them continued their mortal battle for minutes, strike and counter strike, parry and block, deflection, sidestep, dodge. Both were covered in a sheen of blood, red and neon green, scoring minor hits on each other as the battle raged, until, imperceptibly, Marisa's movements began to slow down as her exhausted body started to fail her.

The alien's attacks stepped up in pace and intensity however, and soon it was Marisa's turn to back up, to give ground. The alien's strength and skill began to be displayed more openly, as the hunter scored hit after hit on Marisa's arms and torso, sparks flying as the alien's blades struck the gray armor Marisa wore. In a minute more, Marisa was totally on the defensive, feebly raising her arms to prevent the alien metal blades from slicing into her scored flesh, but in the end the alien gave a snort of disgust and closed impossibly fast with the human, getting in between her arms and using the force of this final rush to shoulder the human onto her back on the ground.

Trying to breathe, her eyes brimming with tears that had sprung unbidden from within, Marisa considered continuing but then relaxed, drained of the energy that had been driving her. She flicked her wrists to retract the forearm blades on either vambrace and lay there, tilting her head back in resigned acceptance of her fate as the alien brought her own blades to prick the skin underneath Marisa's chin, beneath the protection of the mask.

She had challenged a _Yautja_, and lost. She failed. A snarl came from beneath the alien's mask, and Marisa had to blink several times to clear her eyesight enough to read the words scrolling in front of her inside the mask.

"That is why you never hunt from anger, or fear, young blood. You will lose every time." As the alien retracted the blades from Marisa's throat, the human tried to make sense of what had just happened. Slowly, as the alien went to retrieve Marisa's spear from where it had landed, she added things together, and the anger was back in her voice by the time the hunter returned and crouched down beside her.

"You _bitch_. You set me up." Her throat was raw from the exercise and her screams, and her voice croaked but she was too drained to care. The alien retracted Marisa's spear and held it out to her as she replied.

"Yes." The simple answer threw Marisa for a moment before the alien carried on. "You think you can be like us, hunt one of us. You cannot even hunt _pyode amedha_, let alone _kainde amedha_, and only if you can hunt both of those do you stand a chance hunting _Yautja_. You needed to learn this yourself."

"Wait, what do the candy things have to do with it?" she asked, stalling for time as she tried to make sense of what the alien was telling her, trying to avoid thinking of what she had just done.

"You will never be considered ready to hunt a _Yautja_ unless you have proven yourself in battle as _Yautja_ do. You must undergo the trial, defeat _kainde amedha_, to even be given the chance."

Marisa shuddered, her overloaded and rapidly shutting down emotions were still able to be hit by the thought of the black alien creatures, the 'hard meat' to these aliens. Without thinking she raised a hand to rub at the spot on her chest where a _kainde amedha_ tail had been driven through, and winced as she felt the sting of her wounds. Pushing the pain aside, she looked up at the mask of the alien above her, growling low in her throat.

"You set me up to kill a human, just to prove a point? You took away the one thing I refused to surrender!"

"It is that refusal which holds you back. To hunt one of us, you must become one of us. In your anger, you saw a glimpse. Now you must embrace it." A wave of dizziness swept Marisa and her vision darkened for a moment.

"I'm not a killer like you."

As unconsciousness overtook her, the cumulative effects of her emotions and her wounds dragging her down into exhaustion, she missed the alien's response translated into her mask.

"Not yet."

-

* * *

-

Daylight was breaking by the time the alien entered the balcony doors of the apartment, burdened down by the weight of the armored human she carried in her arms. Almost gently, tenderly, she laid the woman on the couch and began to strip away the battered armor from the motionless form, clicking softly to herself as raw wounds were exposed.

Foxy pulled the medical kit from the backpiece of Marisa's armor as she released the heavy armor plating from around her student, reaching over to take one of Marisa's hands in her own and pressing it against the discolored section of the medical kit to trigger it to open. Examining the contents, she selected two vials of shaded blue liquid and began to apply it in thin streams to the woman's wounds as she discovered them.

Marisa moaned softly in her exhausted unconsciousness several times, but the alien moved relentlessly, applying the healing liquid where it was needed. Once she had stripped the human to bare skin, and assured herself all the wounds were treated, she replaced the vials into the medical kit and withdrew a thin metallic tube. She placed it against Marisa's stomach, just below the sternum, before depressing the switch on top of the tube, waited a moment then withdrew the tube from the woman's skin.

She switched vision modes to medical diagnostics, and checked to make sure Marisa was stable, before turning and attending to her own wounds. She looked up briefly as she heard clicking from the darkened kitchen, then went back to dealing with the injuries Marisa had inflicted on her.

"She did well." the figure cloaked in the darkness of the kitchen clicked and growled, with a faint note of pride. Foxy grunted a response as she inhaled sharply from the sting of her own healing fluids being applied.

"If she had not tired herself out so quickly with her attacks, I would have been injured more."

"When do you leave?"

"Soon. The trial is complete, and the hunting grounds cleared of _kainde amedha_. The Elder will wish to depart quickly." A quizzical growl came in response from the hunter in the kitchen. "Two were blooded, three fell." was the alien's matter-of-fact response.

"Why did you not kill her for attacking you?"

"When she fell, she did not try to plead for her life, or to continue a pointless struggle. She accepted that she lost, and the fate she expected. She has honor." Foxy paused for a moment, and the other held its tongue waiting, seeing there was more the woman's trainer wanted to say.

"I think it is inevitable she will hunt you, for what you did." The other paused for a longer time before responding, a regretful rattle accompanying its words.

"What was done had to be done. In time, she will understand. But yes, then she will hunt. Then we will see how well you have trained her."

As Foxy closed her medical kit back up, she looked at the unconscious Marisa and purred to herself.

"She may be a good student." The alien straightened up and turned to the other hunter. "I will stay the day, until she awakens, then I must return to the ship for our departure."

The shadows moved, and Foxy reached into mid air to catch hold of the long bladed knife that shimmered into sight as it passed beyond the cloaking field of the other. She looked at it and recognized the carvings in the hilt, crafted from the spinal structures of a _kainde amedha_ and carved with symbols of the Yautja language.

Without another word between them, the shadows moved and the shimmering field of the cloaked hunter moved towards the door, and into the dawn rising sun beyond. Foxy laid the blade down beside Marisa, then curled up in the kitchen on the floor, before falling into her own light sleep.

-

* * *

-

It was a sign of how much the fight with Marisa had taken out of her that when she woke, it was to find Marisa sitting cross legged on the couch with a cup of coffee in hand. To make it, the human had to have passed close by Foxy in the night, but the motion hadn't woken her. She stood and stretched, loosening her armor where it had ridden up in her sleep, then padded silently over to crouch down to one side of the human.

It was obvious Marisa had been crying, tear-streaks paling the dirt on her face. Neither of them spoke for long minutes – Marisa had nothing to say, and she wouldn't understand anything Foxy said as the alien had removed Marisa's mask while tending the wounds she had inflicted. Marisa broke the silence first.

"You were holding back on purpose. You could've finished it at any time, couldn't you?" Her voice sounded far away to herself. She could hear the alien's affirmative growl, she didn't need the translator to understand it. She sighed deeply.

"I told her once that there was no way she could lose her humanity, even hanging around your kind, you know. I should have realized the same wasn't true for me I guess." Foxy looked at her, then lifted Marisa's mask up, offering it to the human in open invitation. Once Marisa pressed it against her face, activating the electronics inside, the alien spoke.

"You seek to avenge your friend. What sacrifice is too great?" Marisa could only shake her head, she was numb from the events of the night before, too numb to think about the alien's logic. Her head rose sharply and she looked hard at the hunter when she heard the next piece of news.

"I will be leaving tonight. We have other grounds to hunt."

"When will you return?"

"In another half planetary orbit of your sun, one half of your 'years', as always." Marisa digested this information for a few minutes, before she spoke again.

"I don't think I can go through with it. I killed someone last night, another human being, and then ..." Her voice trailed off into silence. The alien looked at her for a moment then gingerly placed one large clawed hand on Marisa's shoulder.

"You will either be a hunter in your life now. Or you will be prey. Only you can decide. When we return, you must make that decision, else there is nothing more I can teach." She nodded in understanding, placing one of her hands on top of the alien's before looking into the dark eyeshields concealing the yellowed irises behind.

"I think I understand. I just need to figure out where I go from here. I'll see you in six months" As the hunter rose and turned to leave, she paused as Marisa called for her by the nickname she had given the alien.

"Foxy? Thank you." The alien growled a quiet response before cloaking and heading out through the balcony doors, leaving Marisa alone with her thoughts and doubts. It took her several hours to shake herself out of the funk she had descended into, and when she realized she was sinking into a despairing state, she did what she always does when feeling low.

She went shopping.

In all fairness, shopping was never really _the_ biggest deal for Marisa. Sex and having fun, until Cally's death, had topped the list, if the truth be told. But it did give her a chance to drop her worries off for the most part and just let herself glide along mentally, and that was what she needed now.

She flitted from store to store, mall to mall, browsing without really seeing the things she examined. She allowed her mind to wander, letting it reach its own conclusions about the rapid sequence of events the night before, and what she should do next.

Towards nightfall, she realized that she had returned to the same mall where she and Cally had gone shopping five years ago, and where Cally had been attacked by two _pyode amedha_. She walked slowly towards the bridge over the highway that had been the scene of her friend's brutal dispatch of one of her attackers, shortly after Marisa had left the mall without a single clue anything had been amiss.

She looked at the area the news back then had said the body had been discovered, but it looked so normal, no trace of the violence that had taken place there remained. She sat on a low stone wall next to the stairs up to the bridge, lost in thought.

_Predator or prey, she said. A fine line between them._ Marisa mused, trying to analyze her feelings looking at the place her friend had proven she was a killer. As Marisa had been the night before.

_How much am I willing to sacrifice to get revenge?_ A much harder question.

_What would Cally do?_ That was a much easier question to answer – she'd armor up, load herself down with more cutlery than you'd find at an Emeril convention, and start taking trophies.

Cally killed someone here. She'd cut a _pyode amedha_ down, right here, in the open, right next to a mall. She'd gone from happy carefree clothes shopper to deadly hunter in the blink of an eye. Marisa had known, had seen the trophies, seen _pyode amedha_ skulls dangling from her friend's belt, but somehow it had all seemed distant, like a huge cosmic joke that only the death of her friend had brought home to her.

She blinked in stunned realization. _When did I start thinking of people as _pyode amedha

As darkness started to fall, and the security lighting of the mall parking lot flashed into light, casting its sickly yellow glow over the area, Marisa sighed, rose up, and with one last glance towards the place she imagined seeing her friend kill someone at, headed home. She had to see someone.

-

* * *

-

"Honored Elder, there is an intruder approaching!" The Elder swung around with a curse, interrupted as he was giving final departure instructions to the ship's pilots. He peered at the holographic display showing the perimeter of the ship and growled in annoyance, summoning one of the others to his side. With a gesture towards the display, he growled.

"Take care of that!"

She remained as still as possible as the alien shimmered into visibility in front of her, the point of the hunter's spear pressing lightly against her stomach, right at the edge of her front torso armor plate. She watched the alien cock its head to one side and growl an angry question, but with her mask hanging loosely from her belt, she couldn't understand any of it. She waited patiently as she heard running footsteps pound along the dirt embankment of the spillway the ship had been concealed within, and nodded her head to the figure that arrived.

"Hi Foxy. I know you're all leaving, but I wanted to see you first." Slowly, the eyes of the hunter whose spear still remained poised barely touching her skin, she reached down to the cloth pouch dangling on the other side of her belt from her helmet. She tugged the pouch open and tipped it on end, allowing the contents to drop into the palm of her hand.

Hesitantly, almost shyly, Marisa reached her hand forwards towards the female hunter then uncurled her fingers, amused to see the alien's startled reaction, then oddly proud to hear the purr in Foxy's throat as the alien recognized what lay in her hand.

"I made my choice. I hope you guys won't be too disappointed when you get back, but there's going to be a couple fewer _pyode amedha_ bad bloods around for you."


	6. abundans cautela non nocet

**abundans cautela non nocet**

"Oh for fuck's sakes!"

Marisa tried to crouch down lower behind the wall she using as a shield as the seemingly never-ending fusillade of bullets spanged around her.

It had taken her three days to actually go out on this, her first ever 'hunt'. She tried to rationalize it away as needing to do research to find where _to_ hunt, after all she didn't have anywhere near as much knowledge of the dark underbelly of the city's criminal enterprises as Cally had once possessed. She'd also gone to get her hair 'done', and now it clung to her scalp in long braids from underneath the gray armored mask where it curved up and over to protect the top and crown of her head.

But a large part of the delay was, despite Marisa's bravado in front of Foxy when she had showed the alien the teeth of her victim ... no, her _prey_, that night, it still wasn't the same as going out and hunting people down. She was beginning to wonder how her friend had ever managed to do this night after night so effortlessly, if this was how it always was!

She'd found the location surprisingly easy enough, a crack house in the outer edges of the city that had been in the news many times as the final resting place of assorted addicts. Everyone knew that the house next door was the supply store, but the police were bought and paid for, and so nothing was ever done about it.

_OK, note to self: Next time they're here, get one of those big laser cannon things!_ she thought to herself, as the dust being blown off the wall by the firepower trying to carve a way through to her.

The approach had been easy enough. She'd used her cloak sparingly, staying to quiet back alleys and parks to reach the house, then found a good vantage point to watch the comings and goings of the store house for an hour. She had deliberately gone through every step of Foxy's training in the elements of preparing for the hunt, and then gone through them again just to make sure.

The problems began when she had cloaked fully and moved towards the back of the store house. She'd walked right into three gang bangers, local toughs hired as 'protection' against interference in the drug operation. Interference such as her, for example. The slight distortion of air that the cloaking mechanism generated was enough to set off alarm bells in the mind of one of the thugs, who had opened up on her with a really large machine gun.

The end result was her current predicament - she was behind one wall, they were behind another further down, and every second increased the chances reinforcements would arrive, drawn by the sound of gunfire. They wouldn't be coming to help her though.

Unconsciously she ran her hands over the various attachment points on her armor, checking the inventory of weapons she _did_ have. The paired vambraces and the twin blades mounted on each, a duplicate of her friend's design, had additional hardpoints for various other instruments of mayhem – which she obviously hadn't earned yet. Her spear was snugly pressed to the armor on one thigh, and the alien gray armored greaves protecting her calves and shins held a long bladed dagger/shortsword apiece.

A pair of the extending throwing stars rested lightly in their holsters dangling from her belt, and she had a powered frisbee that could cut through most anything in a recessed panel of her other thigh's armor, and last but not least, she had the long blade Foxy had left for her, mounted diagonally across her back with the handle downwards.

A bullet went past her, hitting the ground and speckling her exposed skin with bullet fragments, pinpricks of red blood starting to bead where they had hit hard enough, and she growled low in her throat.

"Christ, if they could see me now, they'd be wetting themselves laughing at me!" she muttered, reaching to her belt and taking out the throwing stars. With a press of her thumbs to the center of the small disks, and a flick of her wrists, the spikes sprang outwards, before she took a few deep breaths to calm herself and concentrate on the information her mask's eyepieces were giving her about the direction the sounds were coming from with precision.

She timed her move, waiting for the letting off of the firepower being sent towards her as the thugs reloaded. She caught the right moment, and threw herself to one side of the wall, angling sideways and flipping the spikes towards the gunmen before hitting the ground and tucking into a roll back to her feet. As she sprinted away at an angle she heard the cry of two of the gunmen, the spikes must have connected.

More bullets followed, pucking at the air behind her and sparking off the ground as the third gunman tried to get a clear shot at her, but then his bullets climbed, heading skywards before the gunfire ceased. Marisa saw out of the corner of her eye one of her stars spinning towards her at dizzying speed, but reached for it and let it slap back into the palm of her hand, nicking herself slightly on one of the _kainde amedha_ talon tips that formed the end of the lethal weapon.

Marisa reached the back of the derelict car she had been heading for and risked a quick look through the shattered windows towards her assailants, but saw nothing, heard nothing. After a moment, she cautiously rose, and half crouched as she ran towards the place they had used for cover, darting from side to side in case it was a ruse.

None of the three thugs was in any condition to try to trick her, she discovered as she closed on their location. The initial throw of the Yautja weapons had penetrated the wall they had been hiding behind, and the stars had passed completely through the chest of two of them. The third she judged to be the one hit on the return trip, and she swallowed back the rising bile in her throat as she saw her missing throwing star, the spikes had lodged in the back of the man's head.

As she retracted the second throwing star's spikes and stowed both of the weapons back in their holsters, she kept her eyes open and ears straining to make sure she wasn't surprised. Part of her mind started yammering at her that she had just killed three people, but she firmly told it to shut up and crouched down beside the three gang members. With a flick of her hand, she extended the pliers of a multi-tool, her only 'human' equipment, and followed the example Cally had set in the beginning – removing the incisor teeth of her victims.

It took her a few minutes, the blood and saliva soaked teeth were slippery and hard to grip. One of her victims had been in dire need of a dentist, and one of his incisors shattered as she tried to extract it. She cursed, wondering why she had ever thought any of this would possibly go according to plan as she extended the blades resting against one of her forearms and stabbed them down into the neck of each of the three.

She rocked back on her heels and took a deep breath. She'd done it! Her first deliberate kills, her first deliberate trophies, her first time hunting alone.

She wanted to cry in shame.

She wanted to scream in pride.

She did neither, trying to concentrate on completing her task, but the sound of rapidly running feet traveling away from the storage house gave her the impression the rest of her prey for the night would soon be long gone. On the remote chance someone might call the police (a very remote chance, but hey, you never know!), she withdrew from the area and headed home. This was enough for tonight.

So preoccupied was she with looking out for _pyode amedha_ presence on the way out, she didn't notice the nearly motionless shimmer of air on the roof of the crack house, looking down at the scene.

Once she was away, the figure moved, dropping down the side of the building before striding over to the three dead bodies. It watched for long moments as the scarlet red forms of the three slowly changed to dull red, then blue, noting her removing of her trophies, their severed spines. The muted sounds, growing in volume, of cars driving towards the area came to its ears, and it padded quietly away, heading in a different direction from the one Marisa had taken, away from the arriving forces.

-

* * *

-

Marisa opened the closet and started removing her armor and weapons. The dead security cube on the wall mocked her with its presence, its cyclops eye that sensed if someone opening the doors was supposed to was quiet and dull. It had originally been placed there when Cally had earned the heavy weaponry and suicide bomb from the aliens, and had been keyed to only allow her into the closet, rigged to detonate and wipe out half the city if anyone else had gone looking for her alien-crafted equipment.

When Marisa had returned from seeing Foxy that last time, she found someone had been in the apartment while she was gone. Nothing seemed disturbed, except the door to the bedroom had been open. She had refused to go in there except to keep the place clean, and she had almost had a heart attack when she saw that whoever had left the door open had been into the closet as well.

Buried through that single lens of the destruct device had been one of Marisa's _Yautja_-wrought blades, one of the spares she had picked up from Foxy as she learned more and different weapons. It had shorted out the system, rendering it inert and harmless.

It reminded her that she she was not alone, even with Foxy and the others having left. Her _prey_ was nearby. She guessed he had decided that she would need the cupboard now. That he was close enough to know what had been going on, where she was, how far she had progressed, had sent a chill through her. _There is a fine line between hunter and prey_, Foxy had said.

That single act of intrusion reminded her of the line she was approaching, had reached.

She focused on one icon of the display inside her mask, and felt the tension ease along her forearms and her thigh. She flexed her wrists in a peculiar pattern and the vambraces slid down, the anchors underneath them releasing from her flesh, and fell onto the bed with a soft thump. She tugged the thigh armor panel away from her thigh and dropped it with the blade mounts, then disconnected the mask from the rest of her armor and laid it on the top shelf of the closet space.

Piece by piece she disrobed from her alien shell, disarmed from her alien implements of death, placing each item inside the closet. She was still trying to figure out if there was supposed to be some particular layout, but for now functionality was enough, everything went where it fit.

Stripped of the gray metal, the alien hide of the straps and padding, and the undermesh climate control bodysuit, she examined herself in the full length mirror on the back of one of the closet doors.

_Well, I can still look at myself in one. I guess that counts for something_.

She rubbed the reddened skin of her forearms and thigh, where the _Yautja_ systems had connected with the anchoring mounts fused with her bones. When she had first worn the vambraces, and the armored section for her thigh that her computer (if she earned one) would mount to, she had discovered the mechanism which prevented those things from being stripped from a _Yautja_ by others.

It had hurt like hell.

The idea of having pieces of alien metal embedded inside her hadn't seemed so bad once she got used to it, although the first time she'd blocked with the forearm blades and felt the impact travel through the bones in her arms had been a shock. They never tripped metal detectors, and the weight was hardly noticeable, the only problem was they itched like crazy sometimes.

This didn't surprise her. It was probably just some universal bit of annoyance to help keep _Yautja_ in a perpetual bad mood.

She looked at the bed sorrowfully for a moment, the air goose-pimpling her skin, before she turned and went back into the living room, curling up on the couch and falling into a restless sleep as the false dawn glow started to creep over the horizon and through the balcony doors.

-

* * *

-

She took a moment to slow her breathing, then punched the speed dial on the phone at her desk.

"Yes?"

"It's Kylie McCullough sir, do you have a minute?" She could hear the resigned sigh on the other end of the line over the speaker, and held her breath.

"I know who it is. I'm feeling generous, you can have two minutes. Make the most of them." came the reply, exasperated and short tempered.

"Yes sir. I've received some interesting news from the city, sir."

"What might that be, Ms McCullough?"

"It looks like she's back in business." She tried to keep her voice even and steady, but a hint of her excitement leaked through. There was a pause on the other end. When the man spoke again, she knew she had his interest.

"What do you base this on?"

"There's been a couple of murders recently, the bodies were desecrated the way _she_ used to do it."

"A copycat?"

"I doubt it, the police held things back from us about the way people were being killed before, things that were never made public. The new murder victims are showing the same pattern, including the injuries that were never revealed. It _has_ to be _her_." She felt her voice rising, but she couldn't help it. This was the best news she'd had since she'd been brought here.

"Assuming it is her, I take it you are bringing this to my attention for a reason?" She took a deep breath before plunging in, the words tumbling out.

"Yes sir. I'd like to fly back there and catch her."

"You would risk compromising the entire project."

"Sir, I believe that if we have her in our hands, the project can advance much faster than it could without her. The aliens she runs with _know_ how to train the creatures. If we capture _her_, we can use her as bait to lure the aliens in, then we capture one of _them_ and get them to spill all the details."

"I seem to recall the last attempt to take the woman did not go very well." She could hear the note of amusement in his voice, as she fingered the stump where once her little finger had been. She hated him for bringing that up, but she needed to be patient. He was the means to an end.

"This time would be different, sir. They were amateurs the last time, who refused to recognize the threat. With the Company's resources and skills we ..." He interrupted her before she finished her thought, obviously he had the same idea.

"Perhaps." The silence over the telephone went on, and just as Kylie was wondering if they'd been disconnected he spoke again. "Your flight leaves in two hours. Find the extraction team, take them along with you.

"Thank you sir". She was hard pressed to control her glee at the permission, and as she hung up the call she punched the air, spinning around and cackling to herself as she started to put together some things from her desk.

"Time's coming, _bitch_, your ass is _mine_ at last!"

-

As Kylie and the group of men who worked on special 'acquisitions' for the project boarded a dark panel van for the trip to the airport, none of them noticed a small compact car nearby. The car followed them all the way to the airport, pausing at the kerbside to allow the passenger to get out, carrying a nondescript bag, before driving off to merge into obscurity with the rest of the traffic at the terminal.

The man, slight and with a beard, dressed in the 'uniform' of tourists everywhere – shorts and a gaudy Hawaiian looking shirt – kept the group in sight as they walked to a private gate area. His dress, and the bag he carrying, was perfect camouflage, making him look for all the world like any other bored traveler waiting like all the others in the airport for their inevitably-delayed flights.

If anyone had asked him which flight, which airline, he had already checked the departures screen when he entered the terminal to find one he could claim to be booked on, although it might have raised eyebrows if someone had checked the information too much – the gate for that flight was at the other end of the sprawling airport.

Fortunately for him, no-one took a second look at him, and he was able to watch through the windows overlooking the tarmac as the group he was following boarded a Gulfstream private jet. He noted the tail number, and the kanji characters on the fuselage, and waited until the jet had departed before heading towards a bank of payphones.

He made a call, and gave them the description of the Gulfstream, before writing down the information relayed to him – destination, passengers, ownership. Once finished, he called a different number and spoke quietly for several minutes, occasionally nodding towards the end of the call, until he hung the phone up for the last time, and left quickly for the ticket agents, looking for the next commercial flight to the United States.

When Kylie's plane landed, and the team disembarked, they were being watched by unfriendly eyes. As their rented van pulled out of the parking lot, a well-worn car took up station behind them, all the way to the city, the driver making cell phone calls at regular intervals.

-

An hour later, a commercial flight from across the Pacific landed. A handful of men disembarked and passed through customs, to be met by a professionally dressed woman, who handed each of them an envelope. Each of them headed to the rental car agencies, and soon they too were heading to the city.


	7. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

**Quis custodiet ipsos custodes**

Marisa was still uncertain about her hunting. She had made mistakes the first time on her own, and that had shaken her confidence. She had done everything 'by the book', but still things had gone wrong, and she wanted to understand how. She didn't hunt the next few nights, instead trying to catch up on some sleep and let her wounds sustained in her fight with Foxy heal.

She forced herself to go out in the meantime, though she was sure everyone knew she had killed people, that the cops were just around the corner waiting for her, that somehow what she had done was branded across her forehead for everyone to see. She was so tense that she sat through a movie and didn't even remember which one she went to see 10 minutes after leaving the cinema.

At the same time, she tried to look inside herself, to find the spark of self-hatred she thought she should be feeling, for killing people. It frightened her that she couldn't find it, as much as she hoped it was there. She finally understood the fear that had plagued Cally for so long, holding her back. She realized that there was a large difference between Cally's situation and her own, though. Cally had wanted to train to hunt, so she could be 'worth' being hunted, whereas Marisa ... She wasn't in this for such a noble purpose.

She felt distant from her surroundings. As distracted and lost in her examination of her hunt as she was, she could 'feel' her surroundings, was more aware. More alive. She noticed things that had escaped her for so long - colors were sharper, sounds were louder, the sky was bluer, the night was clearer. For someone who had prided themselves on being relatively uninhibited, open to experiences, her new-found sense of presence in the world came as a delight, and a shock.

That awareness was kicking in this morning, as she went for her now-daily jog. Something felt wrong, her senses were ringing alarm bells in her mind demanding she sit up and pay attention. Without showing it outwardly, she felt a sense of calm confidence, tinged with a level of lethality, come to her as she ran along the sidewalks.

In a few blocks, she realized that she kept seeing the same dark van, as if it was pacing her, following her. Thinking back, she remembered she had seen it before, yesterday, as well. Her first thought was it was the police - they'd finally figured out who she was, what she'd done, and they were waiting for the right time to bring her in - but that didn't make sense to her. If it was the police they'd have moved on her when she slept – or handed her to the people who were paying them far more than they made on the city payroll, the criminals.

She altered her route to see what the van would do, and she wasn't surprised when it changed course to keep following her.

_Oh goodie, my first ever stalker!_

Technically, that wasn't entirely true – her first stalker had been an alien hunter that had almost killed her, but this was her first time being followed by _pyode amedha_ so the distinction seemed important. As more blocks passed, she started trying to formulate a plan. Where to go? Her instincts told her to head to the park, several blocks away.

_Get them out of the van and on foot. That way I can isolate them, take them_

As she ran, she checked the blade in her waistband was secure and concealed, grinning to herself as she remembered how she had chided Cally for always going armed. She almost stumbled as she suddenly realized where she had gone wrong with her hunt, the answer being inadvertently provided by her current situation. She had analyzed the situation then, gone through all the things Foxy had been teaching her – but she'd been trying too hard. No two hunts would ever be the same, and she'd been too static, too unresponsive to the actual environment she had been facing.

This time, her distraction had proven a benefit, because it meant she was reacting to the environment, the problem she faced, without trying to over-think it. Her instincts had a better grasp of what needed to be done than her conscious mind could provide.

With this new found realization, her confidence began to rebuild itself, but she remained wary. Things could change in an instant, she couldn't afford to be complacent.

She turned into the gated entrance to the park, and angled over towards one of the more out of the way jogging paths, slowing down so as to give her followers a chance to get out of the van. She didn't want to lose sight of them if she could avoid it. As if on cue, the van pulled up to the curb behind her and several people got out, before the van sped off, presumably towards the other side of the park.

_So they want to box me in_

As she rounded a curve in the jogging path, she caught sight of a car pull up to the curbside, two men climbing out before it too left the area.

_They need backup, even better!_

She was trying to make light of the situation to herself, but she was beginning to get worried. There were now at least five people behind her, and an unknown number would arrive, presumably, from ahead. All she had with her was one of the alien long knives, and the unarmed combat skills Foxy had been working with her to develop – a nasty set of skills to be sure, but still ...

The thought of running away didn't even cross her mind, and Foxy's words about that fine line kept coming back to her. The people following her thought they were the predators, but she was becoming more and more the one able to disabuse them of that if the need arose.

To throw her followers off, she stopped at a bench a third of the way around the path she had taken, stretching a few times before simply sitting at one end of it.

_Take control of the situation, force others to react to you. It takes time for them to adjust their thinking, and gives you an advantage_

Another lesson from Foxy, and one she grinned to herself at remembering. She sighed inwardly, oddly missing the brusque alien female, her trainer. She wondered what the hunter was doing at that moment, and if she'd be proud of her student's application of the lessons so far.

She watched as the people from the van slowed on the path, then stopped, but was disappointed that they didn't seem fazed by her abrupt change in plans. She reappraised them as they casually spread out, keeping their distance without looking as if they were doing so, or even interested in her. Whoever they were, they were disciplined and professional, and she filed that away to keep in mind.

More surprising was the reactions of the second group to have entered the park behind her, they seemed to be spending more time looking at the first group than they were watching her. They seemed less practiced at the whole thing, as the two of them moved up a slight incline to sit, keeping Marisa and the first group in sight.

_They're not together,_ she thought, _but who are they watching - me or the others?_

She wondered if there would be a way she could exploit this new information, as she subtly examined both groups. The ones from the van made her uneasy, they had the looks of people who were very accustomed to being predators. Cold dead eyes was her first impression, and she understood these were people who would have no hesitation in using violence, or death.

The two men on the side of the hill also seemed to radiate danger, a willingness to do violence, but something was different about them, and she spent a few minutes trying to understand it, before a voice from beside her broke her out of her analysis.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't the powderpuff girl." Marisa blinked at the scorn dripping from the familiar voice, and turned to look at the speaker with surprise obvious in her widened eyes.

"Well hello there. I thought you were still in the nut house?" Kylie's eyes flashed in anger, and she poked Marisa in the arm with one long manicured fingernail.

"You know as well as I do that I'm sane. Now where is she?" Marisa was sure that any claims of sanity were themselves a delusion on the ex-reporter's part – she could feel the energy the woman was giving off, waves of deranged hatred barely suppressed and she shivered despite herself. She collected herself and tried to put on an innocent expression.

"Where's who?"

"Your friend, the bitch in black." Marisa rolled her eyes, not needing to act her exasperation.

"Oh for Christ's sakes, don't you ever give it a rest? Your mystery 'bitch in black' was what got you locked up in a padded room to begin with, remember?"

"She's no mystery, you know who she is, and you know where she is. Tell me, and I'll maybe let you leave here alive."

"I don't know what you're ..."

"Don't give me that." Kylie interrupted her. "You're living in the bitch's apartment, and I remember seeing you with her. Now where is she?" Marisa tried to figure out how the woman had found out that the apartment had been Cally's to begin with. Marisa had assumed that she'd been found because Kylie had recognized her in passing, but it looked more like the apartment had been under surveillance.

_For how long?_

"All I remember is you interrupting us at lunch one day with your crazy bullshit." Kylie grabbed Marisa's upper arm, fingers digging into the muscle painfully as the ex-reporter drew in closer. Marisa tried to shift further away, only partially feigning nervousness – the woman was truly insane! Anxious to head off any explosion, to give herself more time to think, Marisa quickly came up with an answer of sorts.

"The apartment's mine, now let go." The look of disbelief on the woman's face was patent, and her next question showed her skepticism.

"Yours?"

"Yes. It was left to me."

Marisa sensed two of the three who had followed her into the park move closer, the leader looking around to make sure no-one was paying attention to the altercation on the bench. Marisa wondered if the watchers on the hill had been noticed, were seeing what was going on, but she didn't dare take her attentions too far off the unbalanced Kylie.

"Left? How?"

"In her will."

"Her what?" It was Kylie's turn to be confused.

"She died, before you were locked up. They never found the body, she was declared legally dead a year later, and the apartment had been left for me in her will. That's why I live there. Satisfied?" She bit out the words in a staccato, not caring if the pain they evoked showed or not. She was beginning to get angry at being questioned by this relic of the past.

"She's not dead, she's back killing people with her alien fuck buddies."

"You really are crazy. They're the ones that killed her!" Marisa's voice rose and she had to fight to control herself. The pain and anger in it was so blatant even Kylie felt it, as far gone as she was, but the ex-reporter shook her head.

"I don't believe it!"

Marisa snorted, and took the opportunity to pull herself free of Kylie's grasp of her arm. She could see the woman had come from the other direction with a man, her mind started putting all of them together into two groups – Kylie's, the four from the van and the ex-reporter, and the two that had come from the car, the 'others'.

"Yeah, well I don't care what you believe or not."

They sat there looking at each other for a few minutes, both of them trying to digest the information they were getting – Kylie about Cally being dead, and Marisa that the woman was still around, still fixated on Cally, and seemed to have very competent looking backup. Kylie broke the silence first, sounding almost ... plaintive?

"Someone's killing people the same way she did." Marisa shrugged.

"Seems to me like you'd be the prime suspect for it, since you know so much about it. You figured you'd try to get people believing your crazy shit and take her place?" A malicious streak in Marisa took over for a moment, and she needled the woman.

"You show up in town, and suddenly bodies start showing up again? Yeah, I'll bet there's someone might want to look into that. Think you've got enough fingers left to cover being asked?" As she finished, she pointed to Kylie's maimed hand, the legacy of her dalliance with the Yakuza. She was rewarded with the woman going red, covering the back of her hand to conceal the stump of her missing finger with her other hand.

A cheap hit, but a good one all the same. Marisa wanted to keep needling the woman, to get her angry and see what she might blurt out in response. The warnings about hunting in anger also applied to debating in anger. Lose perspective, lose focus, and you lose.

"We're going to be watching you." Kylie warned, spitting the words out.

"Feel free _bitch_. Just remember something. You might want to be careful about pissing me off. Don't forget, _you_ were a part of her being murdered, I _might_ just decide to remember that and do something about it."

"Ohh, the powderpuff girl is getting moody! Look at me, I'm _so_ scared!" Kylie tried to be sarcastic, to dismiss the threat with bluster, but she was feeling nervous all the same. She remembered a similar warning Cally had given her, and how she had almost ended up dead if Cally hadn't decided she 'wasn't worth the effort'. Marisa smiled sweetly.

"You think you're the only one who knows people who can do their dirty work for them?"

Kylie glanced at the four men that had come with her, and stood angrily. As a group, the men converged on the ex-reporter, who poked a finger towards Marisa.

"I'll find her, and then her ass is mine. Get in my way, and yours will be mine too."

The woman turned and stalked away, surrounded by the others, Marisa's reply burning in her ears.

"Sorry dearie, deranged psycho hose beasts from the armpit of hell aren't my type."

-

Marisa waited, expectantly, and wasn't disappointed. One of the two men on the hill moved off towards the entrance to the park, while the other came down to the path, before stopping by the bench. Marisa eyed him curiously as he gestured to the bench.

"Do you might if I sit?" His accent was faint, and she couldn't place it, but he was certainly a foreigner..

"Feel free." They sat there in silence until the man's companion returned from the park entrance, nodding once to the man on the bench before moving off to the side at a distance enough from the bench to provide some privacy. Marisa waited, unsure of the situation and unwilling to make the first opening.

"You seem to have some strange friends." Marisa laughed wryly as she turned to get a better look at the stranger.

"I have many strange friends." He smiles gently, showing teeth. For an instant, Marisa wondered how they'd look in her trophy collection and stifled a giggle.

"Yes, I'm sure you do. I'm curious about the ones who just left however."

"They qualify as strange, but not as friends." He raised an eyebrow towards her.

"How curious. They certainly seemed to know you." She shrugged helplessly.

"I just have one of those faces I guess." They both waited as a jogger came trotting down the path before continuing.

"It's very striking yes, but somehow I doubt that was the reason for their interest."

Marisa laughed. This was definitely a polite interrogation.

"Flattery will get you nowhere. What's the reason for yours?"

"Anything they have an interest in, I have an interest in finding out why."

"That's not even close to an answer." She chided him gently. It was his turn to shrug.

"It's the only one I'm prepared to offer."

"That does tend to cut down on the conversational potential." They both laughed, and fell to silence again. Marisa felt a chill and looked around but couldn't see anything except the stranger's colleague and the empty jogging trail. She kicked herself for having been stationary for so long, the sweat she'd worked up jogging to this point had evaporated.

She stood and stretched, the man rising with her, and they began to walk back towards the entrance to the park, the other man leading out of earshot ahead.

"You say they are not friends. Are they instead enemies?" She looked over to him and a slight smile played across her lips.

"Only if they decide to be stupid." He nodded.

"There is a saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

_What's he after? Does that mean McCullough's his enemy? Who are these people?_

"I prefer 'The enemy of my enemy has an awful lot of enemies'." He smiled again. They paused by a water fountain, and once she had taken a few mouthfuls and straightened up they continued towards the entrance.

"I would very much like to know what their interest is in you." He asked as they came to the end of the pathway.

"You could always just ask them instead." He shook his head, almost sadly.

"The thought had occurred to me, but I would prefer they not know I'm asking about them."

"Why?" He said nothing, and she sighed. "I'm sorry I can't tell you anything you seem to be interested in."

"As am I." He pulled a notebook and pen out of his jacket, and scribbled something. He finished and tore the sheet of paper away from the notebook and handed it to her. There was no mane on it, simply a local area phone number. "If you think of something I might like to hear, you can reach me there."

The strange man walked a little faster to catch up with his colleague, and as the two of them reached the kerb the car they had arrived in pulled up. Once they were inside, it pulled away, leaving Marisa standing there looking very bemused.

_Now what the hell was any of that about?_

She shrugged and started jogging again. She'd have to work hard to loosen up again after all of this talking today.

There was no-one left to notice the faint shimmer in the air that betrayed the departure of the final witness to events.

-

"Do you believe her?" The voice on the telephone was distorted, a combination of the long distance call and the nature of the encryption being used to scramble it. Far beyond the capabilities of anyone to decipher, it means their conversation was absolutely secure – if hard to understand at times.

"I don't know. The aliens are psychos, it wouldn't surprise me for them to kill her. But we know someone's out here killing people the same way the bitch did, so until we know who that is, I don't think we should just take the woman's word for it."

The news that "the Bitch in Black' was dead had shaken Kylie. Throughout her time in the psych wards, she had held onto the possibility of one day getting her revenge on Cally. In her mind, she now hated the aliens for having cheated her of that revenge.

If the bimbo friend was to be believed of course.

"If they killed the woman's friend, she might be more useful as an asset." the voice on the other end of the line mused. Kylie's eyes went wide, even though she knew he couldn't see them.

"You're joking right?"

"I never joke, Ms McCullough. I am not saying we should trust her, but she might be as interested in getting revenge as you are. Keep it in mind." The coldness of the response made Kylie catch her breath for a moment, belatedly remembering who she was talking to.

"It'd be a huge mistake."

"We shall see. Place the woman under observation and continue your search in the rest of the city to see if you can identify the killer. I want answers."

"Yes sir."

Today downright sucked.


End file.
